


Magic, Moonlight, and Midnight Conversations

by experimentaldragonfire



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Excessive use of italics, Gen, but mostly just friendship, mostly canon-compliant, spoilers through deep dive, starco if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/experimentaldragonfire/pseuds/experimentaldragonfire
Summary: Directly following the events of "Deep Dive," Star and Marco have a much-needed discussion about wands and the nature of magic.





	Magic, Moonlight, and Midnight Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> This is both my first posted fanfic in a few years, and my first work in this fandom. There were a lot of things I thought went unsaid at the end of "Deep Dive," and weren't addressed in "Monster Bash" at all. So I decided the logical thing to do was to write the conversation that I thought should have happened at some point.  
> This fic contains a lot of conjecture about how magic works in Mewni and in SVTFOE in general, and not a huge amount of fact-checking. My intention here was never to write a perfectly canon-accurate analysis of magic in the show, but rather to fill in a narrative gap that I felt existed. Hopefully I did a decent job of that, at least!   
> (Also, please try to ignore my excessive use of italics and em-dashes—I may enjoy using them slightly too much.)

It's late, the silence of the night air and the perfume of the rose gardens casting a tranquil air over the castle; a much-appreciated change from the chaos of earlier. After all the damage had been erased by a wave of Star's wand and a purple cloud of magic, everything seemed like it had returned to normal. Somehow, the topic of what, exactly, Star's adventure had consisted of remained undiscussed—such matters seemed less important after weeks of little to no sleep. Any conversations about the events of the evening could surely wait until the next day, couldn't they?

The rapid  _patpatpat_ of hurried footsteps that could only belong to a specific castle inhabitant seemed to indicate otherwise.

Marco awoke to the uncomfortable—but not unfamiliar—sensation of a certain Princess of Mewni launching herself onto his sleeping form. He blearily blinked away the clouds of sleep from his vision to find Star less than an inch from his face, her knees pressed into his chest, sky-blue eyes staring deep into his own.

_"Marco,"_ she stage-whispered, inclining her forehead so it nearly touched his own. "You used  _maaaaagic._ "

Marco didn't think he'd ever seen someone go for so long without blinking.

Resigning himself to having this discussion  _now_ , rather than after a good night's sleep, Marco shoved Star off his chest and sat up, draping the duvet around his shoulders like his now-relinquished cape.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did. But it wasn't—it was  _your_ wand. I just read some words out and pointed it at something."

" _Noooooo,_ _"_ Star shushed him, pressing a single finger to his lips and managing to shove his head back into the wall at the same time. "The wand  _changed_ for you. It was  _your_ wand when you used it. You, Marco Diaz, did  _magic!_ "

Star jumped off the bed, pulling out her wand. In the moonlight, it looked less like the garishly-designed toy Marco had initially taken it for when he first met Star, and more like the ethereal instrument of indescribable power that it was. Or at least, the instrument of indescribable power that he understood it to be.

The two paused for a moment, both staring contemplatively at the wand.

"You know," Star began, glancing up to meet Marco's eyes—"the wand isn't so much a  _source_ of power as it is...an amplifier? I think Glossaryck told me once that it's more like a means of channeling magic, rather than creating it."

Marco pulled his duvet tighter around his shoulders. "But didn't Ludo want the wand because it could give him magic? And it changed its shape for him, too."

"Everyone in Mewni has some degree of magical potential, humans and monsters alike. Magic is a fact of life here; it's a part of all of us. But the thing is...even with that inherent magic, Ludo still had to practice to use the wand. Even I can't master a spell immediately!" Star punctuated this statement by collapsing back onto the bed, flinging her arms behind her head as she stared at the ceiling. "You managed to do that spell on the first try, without any prior experience. You even got glowy moons on your cheeks!" 

As if to emphasize her point, Star poked Marco's face, in the approximate location the marks had appeared earlier.

"Wait, wait, wait, I did? I thought glowy cheeks were a Star thing!" Marco got halfway from his bed to his mirror before Star grabbed his wrist to hold him back.

"They're not there anymore! Only when you were talking to me through the All-Seeing Eye," she clarified.

Marco hesitantly sat down again, meeting Star's eyes. "Okay, but what does that  _mean_ _?_ As far as I know there's no magic on Earth. I shouldn't be able to  _do_ anything magical. And nobody else who's used the wand spontaneously developed cheek-moons!" 

Star sighed. "I don't....know," she admitted, head drooping to stare at her hands, now linked loosely in her lap with the wand grasped between them. "I don't know how, or why, or if it'll have any lasting effect on your life. I mean, maybe it's the fact that you've been here in Mewni for a while now? Maybe you've...absorbed some of the background magic, or something like that? But that still wouldn't explain the cheeks, or the spell casting..." She trailed off, turning her head slightly to look at the moon through the window, as if it would provide her with the answers they both sought. She noticed, dimly, that the sky was lightening to a soft grey near the horizon—an indicator that another night had almost passed with no real rest.

"All I can really say is...if you hadn't done what you did, I think I'd still be lost out there. You reminded me that I had to come back." Star turned and met Marco's eyes. "You make a pretty good lifeline." 

He responded with a soft smile, at a loss for words. Star yawned, the culmination of all her nocturnal travels finally seeming to catch up with her. She scooted across the mattress, stealing some of the duvet along the way and resting her head against Marco's shoulder. Slowly, Star's eyelids drooped, and her eyes closed.

If Marco shut his eyes as well, he could pretend that this was just like old times—falling asleep on the couch with a bowl of nachos in the middle of some terrible-yet-brilliant movie. Before all the trouble with Toffee, before Star returned to Mewni, before everything got so  _complicated_. 

But even with his newfound magical abilities, Marco couldn't turn back time—and wouldn't do so even if he were able. So instead, he contented himself with staring out the window and watching the sunrise—and he tucked the duvet a little tighter around the sleeping princess drooling on his shoulder.

 


End file.
